


A Certain Comfort

by Monocytogenes



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 06:30:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5656012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monocytogenes/pseuds/Monocytogenes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She is not beautiful, Hux thinks, but as her lips lift into a smile, he knows he is not afraid."</p><p>Hux attempts to understand Phasma and finds that she knows just what he needs to hear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Certain Comfort

Phasma is not beautiful.

Hux sees her face for the first time while watching the troopers train, short-cropped hair blown askew, skin coated in a sheen of sweat. Her features are weatherbeaten, blue eyes set deep amidst harsh lines and angles, lips vaguely uneven as though marred by some old injury. She jogs ahead of her men, keeping pace easily, her muscular limbs pockmarked with scars.

Over glasses of whiskey at some backwater port she rolls up her uniform sleeves and tells her stories, some harrowing, some trivial. She has a sharp laugh and a smile that scores her cheeks with creases, and as the other officers joke with her she pats shoulders and punches playfully, nothing more than one of the boys. She has an intractable confidence about her, and when she looks at him across the table (eyes made cavernous from the battering of a world that is only numbers to him) he can’t help but feel inadequate.

It’s easier when her armor is on, their interactions lubricated by the formality of rank. She is a tool then, a piece that moves in deference to his authority, and like him, she is efficient. On the monitors she is reduced to one dot among many, sweeping over enemy terrain like a cloud of insects, and as he tallies the fallen he never has to doubt that she’ll return.

(He knows, too, that when new wounds are added to the old, he’ll never have to hear her scream.)

 

*

 

She turns down his offer of a promotion. It’s an honor, she agrees, but she knows what she’s good at, and she wouldn’t want to serve the Order any other way.

As he records his speeches, straight-backed at parade rest, he thinks about duty and ambition. He wonders whether her tales breathe down her neck the way his memory of his father does, hovering in disappointment with each missed opportunity, each revealed fault. As Hux pores over intelligence reports, re-reading the same fragments in hopes that patterns will emerge, he muses that there must be a certain comfort amidst the material things, the dirt and blood and heat. She can take and see and act with fewer intermediaries, absolve herself from hunting for meanings.

He recalls the old training simulations, the weight of a gun in his hand and the fright of raining fire. He had panicked once, early on, darkness clouding his vision and blood rushing to his head, and the ridicule from his fellows afterward had been nothing compared to Brendol’s weary sigh, the dismissive turn of his head.

Hux feels a lightheadedness as he retrieves sleeping pills from Medical, spotting Phasma nursing bruises and burns, and thinks that he must be afraid of her too.

 

*

 

When he addresses the troops at Starkiller he feels alive in a way he hasn’t in months, his veins coursing with power. It is a culmination of strategy, the painstaking and secretive manipulation of a million parts, and in its authorship he is firmly locked into the present, not the past. Distant explosions blaze in the pallid sky, and he is struck by how fantastically beautiful they are, how clean, how colossal.

It is a sight apart from the jumbled chaos of battle, and yet when he turns back, breathing as though he’s run a mile, Phasma breaks stance to offer an approving nod.

 

*

 

By the time midnight falls after the loss of the base, he has been sick three times.

He isn’t sure how she finds him, staring through a window on a quieter end of the ship, needing to get away from the demands of the bridge and his stifling quarters. Her armor, newly scrubbed, shines with all the dents and scratches she’s earned, and his raw throat burns as he acknowledges her.

“Captain.”

“General,” she says, and falls silent. A long moment stretches between them.

“Did you know, Captain,” he says, his gaze fixed on the stars, “that the universe is continually expanding, drawing everything further and further apart? It is believed that one day the galaxies will be broken up, the planets ejected from their orbits, and the stars will burn out in isolation. All of it inevitable.”

Phasma shifts on her feet. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

“Granted.”

“I don’t believe this was inevitable. Neither do I believe that this loss negates the gains we achieved.” She turns her head, regarding him. “I have personally experienced so many defeats, as well as countless victories. Our forces always recover. As will you.”

He steps closer to her, arching his neck, his brow pinched in conflicted emotion. “May I make a request?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Please remove your helmet.”

She lifts it off, the action tousling her hair. She is not beautiful, Hux thinks, but as her lips lift into a smile, he knows he is not afraid.

He presses his mouth to hers. One of his hands grips her shoulder as though anticipating losing balance, and when he feels her respond, her palm pressing against his spine, he flushes and kisses harder. She makes a soft sound, something meaningless and fond, and it is quite possibly the best thing he’s heard all day.


End file.
